That is a fundamental misunderstanding. Low efficiency traps will ALWAYS catch more wasps than high efficiency traps! For the record I have never said that low efficiency traps won't catch any wasps, quite the contrary.
I think perhaps what is required is a more detailed explanation of the terms used with reference to wasp traps. Before I do it's important to understand what the purpose of a wasp trap is. Contrary to the established orthodox view it is NOT to catch wasps. The purpose of a wasp trap is to remove wasps from a chosen (micro) environment to create a 'wasp free' zone. That is a subtle but important distinction.
Efficiency and effectiveness (or efficacy if you prefer) are not the same thing. You can have a high efficiency trap which is totally ineffective.
Efficiency is a measure of the proportion of wasps that enter a trap that are killed without escaping. A high efficiency trap will kill (virtually) all of the wasps that it catches without letting them escape. A low efficiency trap will kill a small proportion of the wasps that it catches allowing many to escape. The efficiency of a wasp trap is a function of its physical attributes and the ability of those attributes to permanently retain the wasps that are caught.
Effectiveness (or efficacy) is a measure of how good any given trap has been with regards to its intended purpose. In this case how good the trap has been at protecting bee hives from wasp attack. The effectiveness or efficacy of wasp traps is a function of how well they are used and invariably reflects the actions of the user and their ability to correctly deploy the trap in any given situation. So for example a beekeeper who only uses a high efficiency trap for static trapping will not be as effective as a beekeeper who tailors the use of their high efficiency wasp trap to suit the situation which will invariably require dynamic as well as static trapping (essentially the difference in dealing with scouting and swarm feeding wasps).
High efficiency wasp traps will catch and kill relatively few wasps by comparison with low efficiency wasp traps and this is entirely in keeping with wasp behaviour. High efficiency traps will only trap those wasps that come into their scent signature (whether that is randomly for example during static trapping or contrived through dynamic trapping). Because those wasps that are caught cannot escape they cannot communicate the location of the trap and therefore do not recruit more wasps to the trap so kill numbers remain low. By contrast, low efficiency traps not only catch the wasps that enter their scent signature, they also allow wasps to escape to return to their nests to recruit more wasps from outside of the trap's scent signature. This 'communicable' attraction entices vastly more numbers of wasps to the trap and because the low efficiency traps still kill a proportion of the wasps they catch, the number of wasps killed is high. Interestingly, it doesn't matter where you place a low efficiency wasp trap you will always get the same result.
The principle can be illustrated thus. Imagine that a low efficiency trap is only 10% efficient. This means that it kills 1 in 10 of the wasps it catches. Imagine also that each wasp that successfully feeds and escapes from the trap will recruit a further 9 wasps.
The first wasp that enters the trap is one of the unlucky 10% and is killed. (Death toll = 1 / Live wasps in vicinity of trap = 0). The next wasp that comes along will be one of the 90% that survive and escape. That wasp heads back to its nest and recruits 9 wasps meaning that there are 10 wasps at the trap. The trap kills 10% so 1 of the 10 will die leaving 9 to escape. (Death toll = 2 / Live wasps in vicinity of trap = 9). The nine wasps fly off to recruit a further 9 wasps each i.e 90 wasps at the trap. 10% are killed by the trap so 9 wasp die leaving 81 wasps to escape. (Death toll = 11 / Live wasps in vicinity of the trap = 81). The 81 wasps each then recruit 9 wasps giving a total of 810 wasps at the trap. The trap kills 10% so 81 wasps die leaving 729 wasp to escape (Death toll = 92 / Live wasps in vicinity of trap = 729).
Clearly these number are fictitious and in practice the efficiency will vary as will the recruitment rate. Nevertheless the 'model' helps to explain why low efficiency traps kill so many wasps but remain ineffective. By contrast in the same model the high efficiency trap will have killed only two wasps (compared to 92 in the low efficiency trap) but it will have been effective in that it would have a zero count for the number of wasps in its vicinity in the area it's designed to protect.
When we appreciate that wasps programme feed at a food source and ignore all other food sources until the original food source is fully consumed, and furthermore appreciate that wasps navigate to within millimeters of that food source it is entirely predictable that in a head to head study comparing a high efficiency trap placed immediately next to a low efficiency trap that the high efficiency trap will catch few if any wasps at all and the low efficiency trap will catch thousands by comparison. To the lay person this looks as though the high efficiency trap is useless but that's because of a lack of understanding of wasp behaviour and a lack of understanding of the effects of trap efficiency and the difference between physical attraction and communicable attraction between high and low efficiency traps.
This stuff can be pretty difficult to absorb so I'm more than happy to answer questions but please, can we restrict this to a generic discussion because the science applies generically to all high efficiency traps and all low efficiency traps regardless of their source.
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